


back from that soul vacation

by fuscience



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 16:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1134725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuscience/pseuds/fuscience
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s the end of the world as they know it. Or FitzSimmons contemplate how reality and dreams come together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	back from that soul vacation

**Author's Note:**

> For those times when you are brave enough to venture forward, when you are scared enough to jump, and for all the moments someone is there to catch you and another is right there beside you. And, most importantly, for a friend whose posts I always enjoy and who I look forward to seeing again in any capacity. 
> 
> I wish you a swift and hopeful recovery.

Sometimes, they think together, where you **want** to be, isn’t always where you’re meant to be.

_Sometimes, though, there are places you are always supposed to stay._

Jemma leans her head into Fitz’s shoulder, breathing in the comfort. She thinks of when they were safe in the lab at the academy, at SciOps, and doubts her decision for a second. Leo lets his fingers drift over Simmon’s knuckles, red and raw from grappling the wind, allowing his hand to rest on top of hers, covering the battle wounds. He remembers when they met, over and over and over again, how together became normal and apart became anomalous and Fitz doesn’t doubt for a second that this is right where he should be.

These moments - the ones where you’re so sure you’ve lost everything, when you have seen the end and don’t see any beginning, when you feel as if there’s no one to pull you back - when these moments stop and you find yourself waking, alive, although maybe not whole, it’s a message to hang on, to keep leaving the lab, to keep jumping out of planes with the single unending thought that today, today I will do good and tomorrow, tomorrow I will do something great. Jemma does not regret joining this team - not now, not ever - she cannot regret it as much as she cannot regret living or making the choice to jump. But as sure as she knows she would leave the  lab over and over, in a thousand different lifetimes, she is glad that, in this one at least, she does not have to do it alone. Their hearts are raw and healing now, unprepared for the damage this job, this life, would accrue on their untested psyche. Jemma does not want to be afraid of flying, but she knows she is now terrfied of falling. It is a good thing Fitz is next to her, bolting her to the bed and keeping her from drifting off into a brilliant blue sky.

Simmons hair tickles Leo’s nose, and they can feel it scrunch, eyebrows coming to rest, pursed with wrinkles in the space between, and mouth twisted in confusion. Their breaths even out and  heartbeats steady, sinking into unison again, synchrony. Fitz gets up to leave, his warmth waving a mournful goodbye, but his feelings stay. Jemma allows  her chin to fall to her chest as the door slides closed on his retreating back - he is not in the room, but he has always been here, right next to her.

This doesn’t stop her from flinching the next time she enters the lab.

It doesn’t prevent the nausea that wracks Jemma’s body every time the air carrier sways

And it certainly doesn’t help her get out of bed the next morning, when she is paralyzed with the fear that her toes will stretch out only to find no floor below or, worse, there will be a floor but she will find her toes glowing with precious explosive energy.

That is on her and _her strength_

But he makes her smile again and that is so important.

 


End file.
